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Best Served Cold
Product Type: Book
Product Price: $7.99
Manufacturer: Orbit
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Description
War may be hell, but for Monza Murcatto, a solider of considerable fortune; it's a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular - a shade too popular for her employer's taste. Betrayed and left for dead, Murcatto's reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance.
Whatever the cost, seven men must die.
"Joe Abercrombie takes the grand tradition of high fantasy literature and drags it down into the gutter, in the best possible way." --- Time
"Abercrombie is both fiendishly inventive and solidly convincing, especially when sprinkling his appallingly vivid combat scenes with humor so dark that it's almost ultraviolet." --- Publishers Weekly
"A satisfyingly brutal fantasy quest. BEST SERVED COLD? Modern fantasy doesn't get much hotter than this." --- Dave Bradley, SFX
"Abercrombie has written the finest epic fantasy trilogy in recent memory. He's one writer that no one should miss." --- Junot Diaz on The First Law Trilogy
Reviews
Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-09-03
Summary: "At least I felt something..."
I listened to Tantor Media's audio version which was read by the excellent Michael Page. This was a great format except for one chapter ("To the Victors...") in which Mr. Abercrombie meant for us to be surprised by who the principal actors were. In the text, section breaks indicate scene (and therefore character) changes. The audiobook reader, however, used the voices for the characters that Mr. Abercrombie meant for us to think were involved. When the trick was revealed, Mr. Page switched voices. This was confusing, especially since a listener can't see the section breaks and realize that the scene kept changing. I had to go back and listen to it again. This wasn't Mr. Page's fault, though -- just a limitation of the audio format. Other than this scene, the reading was terrific. I was impressed with the way that Mr. Page portrayed Shivers' character development by subtly altering his voice as the story went on.
Speaking of characters, Shivers and Monza, the main characters (I don't think we can call them "heroes"), evolve so gradually and realistically throughout the story that they are both quite changed at the end, but in a completely believable way. Looking back at their journeys is an interesting (and somewhat disturbing) thought exercise. It was fun to meet several familiar faces from The First Law trilogy. Greg was right -- I just loved Nicomo Cosca. He's complex, witty, and unpredictable. Nice piece of work, Mr. Abercrombie! Several of the characters are so keenly characterized that they become over-the-top (e.g., Morveer the poisoner keeps asking the same annoying questions of his assistant who is constantly eating) but at least they're vivid. Friendly, the sociopathic savant, is so creepy that I actually got nervous every time he appeared.
Best Served Cold has an exciting plot and it's clever and funny -- mostly in the droll, ironic, black humor sort of way. For example, Monza pulls Cosca out of alcoholism... so he can murder people. Some of the scenes in which Morveer was trying to poison somebody bordered on slapstick and provided some hilarity to balance the story's grimness.
I enjoyed the plot, characters, and humor in Best Served Cold, and I recognize and admire Joe Abercrombie's talent, creativity, and passion. But the truth is that his stories stress me out. It's sort of like watching Schindler's List. Brilliant movie, important message, but not something I want to watch before bedtime. There's a lot of ugliness and vulgarity -- much of which seems to be done for shock value (e.g., cannibalism and incest) -- and there are more characters who are sociopaths than who are normal. If there's a crude word for something, Abercrombie uses it. Characters are constantly pissing, spitting, growling, bleeding, feeling sticky, and sucking on their sour teeth. They --- (due to some bad language, I edited this out. Please see my review at <[...]> if you want to read this part)--- (as far as I can tell, Mr. Abercrombie doesn't know the polite terms). Battle and torture scenes are the worst -- they literally give me headaches.
All of this makes for interesting, original, dramatic fantasy, and I completely understand why it's so appealing. After all, Joe Abercrombie at least makes me FEEL something. But what he makes me feel is rather depressed, hopeless, and just plain icky, and I can't say that I really LIKE feeling that way.
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-26
Summary: "A bloody, gritty, satisfying revenge saga"
The premise of "Best Served Cold" is simply enough and spelled out on the back cover. It's about a woman scorned who decides that much like Quentin Tarantino's Bride, she will make the men who wronged her pay the best way she can. Joe Abercrombie wastes no time getting the ball rolling, and before long the reader is swept up in the tales of Monzcarro Murcatto and the people she touches on her quest for bloody vengeance. His descriptiosn are visceral and concise, his action scenes intense and almost cinematic in their vivid detail. The dialogue is full of sharp one-liners and always moves the story forward. Even in a book as long as this, there is no filler, each page proving necessary to the churning plot as it all moves toward the inevitable conclusion. He could have taken some easy outs, but Abercrombie instead chooses to walk a fine tightrope in terms of plot and resolution, and in the end he succeeds at crafting a satisfying tale of death, destruction, and meditation on our world and the choices we make in it. For fans of the dark wave of fantasy that has grown over the last 10-15 years, this is a no-brainer.
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-20
Summary: "Violence, cruelty, swearing, and sex, with a purpose"
Anyone who uses a quote from Wrath of Khan as a book title must be really cool, and it appears that Joe Abercrombie in fact is - and he even gives us the real author of the quote, proving he knows stuff, too!
This is a sequel, of sorts, to the First Law trilogy, which was one of the best pieces of low fantasy of the last decade. David Eddings, of all people, came up with a line in his story - although I cant remember which version of the story - to the effect that "rather than good and evil, I prefer us and them. It clears away distractions and lets you focus on whats important". Joe Abercrombie finally delivered on that sentiment with First Law, and proves it all over again with Best Served Cold.
The book opens with Monza Murcatto, mercenary captain, stabbed, strangled, and thrown off a mountain by her employer. She survives only because she lands on the corpse of her beloved younger brother, who met with the same fate and died before her eyes. She swears vengeance on the 7 men who tried to kill her, and puts in motion plans to kill them all, one by one.
Despite this, to an extent to book starts traditionally, with Murcatto gathering a "magnificent seven" of offsiders to help her in her quest: Caul Shivers, a northman looking for redemption in all the wrong places; Friendly, a psychopath just looking for order; Nicomo Cosca, a drunken husk of the man he used to be; and others, including a Castor Morveer, venomous poisoner and his ambitious assistant Day; and Vitari, who remains mysterious if you have not read the First Law.
The first few murders go to plan...and then it all goes downhill fast.
There is plenty of violence, cruelty, swearing, and sex, but I think it all has a purpose. There is a superbly written sex scene - you cant in good conscience call it a "love scene", because it isn't - which contains a great, if perfectly logical, twist.
Nobody is quite who they seem, nobody trusts anyone else, and certainly there are no knights in shining armour here.
Having read the book, I decided that the book was not really about Monza's revenge, or even Caul Shivers' attempt to be a better man, but about Nicomo Cosca's redemption. Perhaps that's my sunny personality, but in the end I think he is real protangonist of the book, and Monza's machinations are just the background to it all.
Of course, if you have read the First Law, you see how Monza's actions will affect the world as a whole, which is really the last thing on anyone's mind at the time.
Abercrombie has done a superb job of writing here, with a dirty gritty tale that is great fun to read, providing you can handle violence, gore and sex. But here's the thing - none of it is gratutious. It all has a point and advances the story. Maybe its not a nice, clean story - and probably Abercrombie would protest that of course the sex and violence is gratutious, course that's how he rolls - but if you only like neat nice bloodless fairy tales, then this book is not, perhaps, for you.
If you like a full-throated adventure that grabs you by the throat and never lets up, and don't mind getting dirty, then this is just the book you have been looking for.
Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2010-08-17
Summary: "Lacks much from the Blade Trilogy"
I have become a huge fan of Joe Abercrombie. I've been recommending the Trilogy to all my friends. Those books were diverse in characters, riddled with intrigue from start to finish and just a pleasure to read from start to finish. This book is NOT in the same league of the Blade Trilogy. I admired that Joe wrote characters that you didn't have to be in love with. His char's are far removed from the stereotype of fantasy writing and I love that he is both graphic and is not afraid to tackle the uglier side of killing in battle. Furthermore I don't mind bad language if it promotes some insight into either the character or the landscape but let me start with that as my first critique of Best Served Cold. The horrid language while lending some credibility to the realism of the characters in the previous books were wasted in this one and in fact just seemed to show some lack of writing maturity on the authors part. The sex scenes in this book were mostly ok but again drifted to obscene but for no reason I could articulate. And trust me when I say bad language does NOT bother me, in fact sailors come to me to learn new words from time to time but again it was just unnecessary throughout most of this book.
The book was entirely too linear. We focused on one story line and while I admire it goes against stereotype (not having to find the one sword, ring, battle the one entity that will destroy all etc...) this book didn't bounce around at all. While that may work if the central char is strong but this character was truly a despicable person, so full of flaws that it made it hard to care whether she lived or died. Again, many of the characters from the trilogy were crusty loathsome people but there was enough bouncing around that you could trudge thru one section of that book b/c each chapter he moved onto another thread he was weaving together.
My last major problem with this book is that it would have been a great short story or just one part of this book but Joe seemed to get into the Robert Jordon trap of starting off each chapter writing a 2 to 3 page summation of what the each character had done that brought them to this point and that kind of reflection is only necessary if you haven't read the first books and even then only necessary to reflect once or twice on a characters past and then move on. Simply put, too much time was spent telling us what Shivers was thinking about what he had done in his past, not writing about his past, but rather telling us what he was feeling or thinking. 1/4 of this book just seemed to be page filler.
So while this wasn't that strong a book i'm still committed to seeing what Mr. Abercrombie has in store and will buy his next book.
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-12
Summary: "EASILY THE TOUGHEST, GRITTIEST NOVEL I'VE READ! AWESOME!"
After reading The First Law Trilogy, of course I was ready for Abercrombie's next book. At first I was thinking, "A standalone?" "Why?" But believe me, this book is huge in scope! I won't spoil anything about it, but this book is very gritty and has some very tough characters. Plus the characters are all unpredictable! The book is about revenge, but on who? There are so many motives and reasons for vengeance in this novel by so many characters, and they all intertwine together nicely. Also, there are a few characters from the First Law series that make appearances! Excellent book on revenge and betrayal! Very David Gemmell! Love action, suspense, surprises, betrayals, and backstabbers? Get this book!!!